


Suspect

by ConvenientAlias



Category: Gattaca (1997)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Brothers, Gen, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-22
Updated: 2017-12-22
Packaged: 2019-02-18 15:05:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,811
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13102752
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ConvenientAlias/pseuds/ConvenientAlias
Summary: Five things Anton thought upon seeing Vincent was a suspect for murder (and one thing he said).





	Suspect

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Heather](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Heather/gifts).



1.

The name the machine matches to the DNA sample is Vincent Freeman, a name as familiar to Anton as his own. The face is not quite as familiar. Vincent, brutal in his leaving, tore his own image out of the family photos hanging in the house, and while some pictures of him remained in albums and Anton looked at them occasionally, he always flinches a little when he sees Vincent’s face so it isn’t something he does all that often. And it has been years since he last saw Vincent in person, and he has changed.

Still looks like a nerd, an obvious invalid, a weakling. Thick thick glasses and a cringing smile and messy (maybe even dirty) hair, even more pathetic than when Anton saw him last, though part of that might be the computer screen’s poor resolution. He’s changed but not that much. Anton knows, if they met, that he would still recognize him.

Vincent Vincent Vincent Vincent. Not a name, not a person, that he expected to come up at his work.

* * *

 

2.

Vincent Freeman. _Freeman_. It’s Anton’s last name too and everyone here should know that. He introduced himself when he first came in with his partner, and valids tend to be particular about details like that. Heck, it’s not even that much of a detail to know a last name, not when said last name belongs to the person who might end up accusing you of murder.

They’re all looking at the screen together, Anton and his partner and Director Josef and a couple other flunkies. Anton wishes he had volunteered to do this initial screening of the test results alone—this particular part of the results, he could have hidden. (It’s family business, part of him says, Vincent is family business, Vincent’s face and records aren’t meant to be perused by casual acquaintances.) But how could he have possibly known? He couldn’t have.

They’re all looking at the screen together and that means everyone is seeing the name Freeman and a face that looks kind of like Anton’s if you squint, if you think about it, and surely one of them is going to put the pieces together. _“Detective, this is certainly an odd coincidence, but this invalid janitor in our records appears to be your brother! Do you have a way of contacting him for questioning? Of course we’re sorry…”_

Surely one of them is going to put the pieces together.

Except, judging by the way they remain intent on the screen, judging by the fact that no one says anything about it…they don’t.

* * *

 

3.

Of course they don’t.

When Anton was a child, teachers didn’t assume he and Vincent were related. Had to be a different family of Freemans. No parents who understood their responsibility to their children, who even produced a well-formed child like Anton, would procreate so irresponsibly as to bring about a Vincent. No, Anton and Vincent could never be related. The teachers would only realize it when Anton’s parents came in for a parent-teacher meeting or a school event, and then they would be awkward for a few minutes before gushing about Anton’s grades, his charisma, his excellent behavior in a classroom setting. Never made any trouble. (This was not true, but Anton at least never got caught or blamed when he started something.) “ _You must be so proud!”_

Anton used to think all that was funny, and feel a little smug that most of the teachers liked him better. The exception was the physics teacher in high school, but Anton had no interest in physics so why should he care about that?

Still, it was a little weird. Half the time his friends would forget Vincent existed, or bring him up only as a joke, as if Anton should be ashamed of his existence. That was embarrassing. That was why he stopped talking about Vincent to his friends after a while.

But he did tell a partner in the FBI about Vincent once. His first partner, back when he thought being partners meant being best friends or something dumb like that. The man taught him everything he needed to know about the business, brought him from untrained prodigy to trained investigator. And in exchange, Anton gave him his loyalty, his friendship, his intimacy.

So he told him about Vincent, about how they had grown up together but separate at the same time, how they saw the world so differently. How Vincent had been fragile both in body and in temperament, and how he had finally left, and in leaving left Anton’s world flatter and less interesting than it had been before.

His partner listened and said, “Sounds like you tried your best with him. Well, you can’t always help everyone. Sometimes people just slip away.”

He made other comments like that, as if Vincent had been a poor, pathetic figure in Anton’s life; that and nothing else. Anton let it pass. He didn’t try to make him understand what he had been trying to say: that Vincent had shaped him, molded who he was. That for a long time he only saw himself in contrast to Vincent, that sometimes that was still true. That Vincent used to complete him. That they were brothers, _brothers_ , and it hurt that Vincent left like a stranger, and that Anton had needed him more than he needed Anton in some ways.

Pointless. No one ever understood Anton and Vincent as equals, as rivals, as halves of a whole. Sometimes Anton even wondered if Vincent saw them that way or if it was only ever Anton.

No one has ever understood them, no one will ever understand them, and of course this group of idiots (partner, director, flunkies and all) miss the obvious as easily as everybody else.

* * *

 

4.

It’s Vincent and he’s on the screen and he’s apparently a suspect for murder?

Vincent was present at the scene of a murder?

The murder of a mission director at Gattaca, too. Not some backstreet lowlife or drug dealer, the sort of men who got killed every day, the sort of men a low-income invalid like Vincent might end up tussling with. A murder so high profile that Anton, an FBI investigator of moderate ranking, has been called in to investigate it.

The goddamned overachiever.

* * *

 

5.

He has to be guilty, right?

It’s not that Anton wants to think of his brother as a murderer. It’s just…

Age six, Vincent used to yell at their parents about how he deserved to have the same extracurriculars as Anton, how they never let him do anything fun.

Age seven, Vincent started putting magazine pictures of planets and articles of space on their bedroom wall. He started talking about how he was going to visit them all someday. Back then their parents just laughed about it.

Age ten, Vincent grabbed Anton’s report card out of his hands on the school bus and tore it into tiny little pieces. He let them drift onto the ground, a mess of 4s and 3s—elementary school grades had numbers instead of letters—as he ranted about how he did just as good for the same teachers and they still made disciplinary remarks like “talks too much in class, dominating teacher’s attention” or “inability to focus”. Anton yelled back that maybe he just did better than Vincent, maybe they just liked him better, and Vincent screamed about how it wasn’t fair wasn’t fair _wasn’t fair_ all the way home. Anton told their parents he lost the card. Fights between Vincent and Anton stayed between them.

Age eleven, the pictures and articles drifted over to Anton’s half of the room. He complained. Vincent said he never put anything up on the wall anyway. Anton started half-heartedly putting up pictures of movie stars. He refused to make any of them from sci-fi movies.

(Vincent never stopped talking about space, how he was going to make it no matter what they said, no matter what anybody said, how no one could stop him.)

Age thirteen, Vincent started making charts and diagrams. Age sixteen, he started looking at colleges with degrees in astrophysics. Age seventeen he started applying.

When he got the rejection letters he didn’t rage, not usually. He went to his room and didn’t talk to anyone for hours, and ignored their parents’ smug, I-told-you-so brand of sympathy over dinner, eating slowly with clenched fists. Anton tried to comfort him, but whenever he mentioned that maybe Vincent should be practical, he got kicked out of his room.

And for as long as Anton can remember, Vincent came home from school or the playground with bruises and scrapes. When he was around he would intervene in the fights. He ended up dragging Vincent away after the other kids stopped fighting, Vincent screaming about how he would still kill them later.

Vincent had a chip on his shoulder. Vincent had something to prove. Vincent didn’t like rejection. He wasn’t mindlessly violent but if you pushed him he could explode. Vincent liked things to be fair.

Vincent used to mention Gattaca a lot, but Gattaca doesn’t accept invalids. Director Josef is willing to admit as much in front of an FBI investigator, albeit in coded language. _“We only accept the best.”_ Translation: _“Your genes need to be up to par, son.”_

The mission director is known to have had a say in the hiring at Gattaca. He’s said to have been a rough man, brutally practical, cruel in his snobbery. Those asked said he was never kind to the staff. Certainly he would never have hired an invalid.

Motivation: Set. Ability?

Well, anyone _can_ commit a murder, really, if they put their mind to it.

(Anton used to be scared of Vincent sometimes, even though they were brothers. He came home with bruises but he gave as good as he took, and there was a certain coldness in his eyes when he talked about people he didn’t like.)

So. He murdered the mission director, right?

 

* * *

 

 

+1.

“But he hasn’t worked here in years?” Anton’s partner asks. “Well, it’s interesting. We’ll have to have a talk with the head of your janitorial staff at least.”

Anton says, “We should search for more evidence.”

Anton’s partner gives him a look. “Begging your pardon, sir, but it seems to me…”

“Janitors get around in odd places all the time. This murder seems too personal to be a random perpetrator.” Anton tries not to blink. He’s better at lying to potential criminals than to coworkers. “My gut says this isn’t the man we want.”

“Your gut.” Anton’s partner is almost twice as old as him and definitely twice as experienced. He smiles a wry smile. “Whatever you say, sir. We’ll follow up other leads too.”

Emphasis on the _too_.

Anton swallows. He needs to find Vincent, and fast.

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, I was inspired by your prompt for the Gattaca fandom about how Anton probably thought Vincent was guilty of the murder (I really do agree) so I wrote you a treat. Hope you enjoyed!


End file.
